Video: Sharpening and detail

Welcome back. In this movie we're going to look at how we can add some clarity and also soften an image with the Retouching tool. All right. Well I have the Retouching tool selected. I've chosen Clarity as my Paint option. The Effect is really high. Brush Size is a pretty small size brush. Lots of Feathering and then Flow I'll bring down just a little bit. Then I'm going to zoom in. Command+Plus on a Mac, Ctrl+Plus on a PC. When I zoom in, I notice the hair isn't quite sharp enough for me. So I'll go ahead and paint across the hair with this Clarity option. Now a lot of times when you're using the Clarity, you actually won't notice this effect until you turn off your toggle switch, so we'll turn that on and off.

Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 is a powerful photographic workflow application designed to help photographers expand their creative potential. In Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 New Features, instructor Chris Orwig brings fellow photographers up to speed with the application's essential new features. He explores the new cropping and vignetting controls and discusses raw retouching with the new Retouch tool. He explains how to take advantage of these powerful features and become a more effective and creative photographer.

Topics include:

Using the Text, Refine, and Metadata filters to organize and access images

Managing an image library with the Catalog panel, folders, and collections

Sharpening and detail

Welcome back. In this movie we're going to look at how we can add some clarity and also soften an image with the Retouching tool.All right. Well I have the Retouching tool selected. I've chosen Clarity as my Paint option. The Effect is really high. Brush Size isa pretty small size brush. Lots of Feathering and then Flow I'll bring down just a little bit. Then I'm going to zoom in. Command+Plus on a Mac, Ctrl+Plus on a PC.When I zoom in, I notice the hair isn't quite sharp enough for me. So I'll go ahead and paint across the hair with this Clarity option.Now a lot of times when you're using the Clarity, you actually won't notice this effect until you turn off your toggle switch, so we'll turn that on and off.

I just want to bring in a little bit of clarity. This will frame the face nicely and I'll bring that into this area. And it's actually addinglocal contrast. So let's see our before and after. Here's before and after, building up sharpness in that area. Now there are a numberof different ways that we can use this, but so far we're seeing how we can use this in order to add clarity.Let's go over here the face and one of the things I notice is that I have a little bit too much detail in the skin so we can seeover here, there's just a little bit too much detail for me. I'd really like to soften that, especially right in here.So I have the Clarity option. Now, the effect is positive. That's going to add clarity; negative it's going to remove clarity.

So I'll create a new point here. So I have a new point and I'm going to go ahead and paint across this area and this areaunderneath the eye as well. And I'm going to move over here to the skin on this side. Now as I do that, I'm actually softening the skinand it's pretty phenomenal skin softening.Now this image doesn't need it in huge ways. Yet let's look at our before and after. There's before and there's after. We can see thatnot only have I sharpened the hair, but I've also softened the skin. So the Retouching tool does indeed have some phenomenal uses.Again, one of things that you're going to want to do is take a look at this tool, experiment with it because it's a whole new wayof thinking about how we're working on our image. And then finally, remember a few of the shortcuts because those shortcutswill really help you out. It will help you get to the Retouching quickly and then get out of it quickly as well.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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